Suppose that I'm organizing a smallish local convention, a Saturday-Sunday con for 50-75 attendees. I include in the registration material this note:

I'm glad you're coming! During the con, there will be a number of secret games in play. You might be involved in one or more of them, with or without your knowledge. If you suspect that you're an unwitting player in a game, you aren't under any obligation to behave any particular way - feel free to play along, to ask questions, to object, or whatever else you choose to do. Especially, never let the possibility that it's a game make you do anything that makes you unhappy or uncomfortable.

Also, the con's scheduled games always suspend the secret games, so don't worry about a secret game messing up the games you're here to play.

...With a similar note attached to the secret games: No play allowed during a con game, only outside of sessions.

Suppose that you're coming to the con, and that you read this note.

Question 1: For those of you who see an ethical problem with playing The Vengeful Demon of the Ring, does this note resolve it?

Question 2: In the note, have I used the term "unwitting player" correctly?

Question 3: If someone chooses you to be a demon player at the con, without your knowledge as always, are you a player? Are you an unwitting player or a witting player?

1) Not really! Your note has no exit: they should not do anything that makes *themselves* uncomfortable, but if the secret game is harming or making their con experience bad, well, they have no recourse, other than hoping there's a hidden safety valve they can trigger.

I am noting that it's upfront that there will be some tomfoolery involved, but if I'm really reading carefully, it seems like (and could easily be otherwise), that you're organizing a con and then include this after they've registered. So in this hypothetical world, if somebody wants to show up to this con, like they did "last year", and run some games and have fun, and instead their games are interrupted by players acting weird, and asking them to do weird things for them like fetch a Large Coke. The primary escape valve is: "the players annoy the GM enough such that they show visible frustration, or the GM intuits they have to call the players out on playing another game instead of playing the game they're in."

And that's kind of the thing: I would probably be glad take part in weirdsecretgamecon, but I wouldn't want to run a 'normal' game during it. Why bother running for people who are quite possibly going to be enabled jerks?

You could pitch it more upfront, such that everybody who comes is excited for 'subtle secret game con'. You could try and curate the secret games so that to your opinion, they're less likely to create negative experiences for people pulled into them.

Or you could do something like have a reversible label on their badge which indicates their willingness to be involved in tomfoolery, which offers a simple opt out. That's not even a complete save, because even if I'm opted out, if I'm running a game, are my players opted out?

By the way, I want to add, since tone is often hard to communicate, that when I say "Not Really" to the ethical question, it's not a very strong or strident feeling: this game isn't evil or the end times cometh.

3. Not enough information. Assuming a large body of demon players who have been thus notified, some will be players and some will not. Being a player requires participation. I think some congoers will keep that in the back of their mind, looking for secret stuff and it might be reasonable to call them players. Those who forget all about it, or are otherwise oblivious to their use as a tool for the game, are not players.

Why doesn't "unwitting player" mean someone whose decisions and actions, when they're within the purview of the game's rules, are significant & contributory to the game's ongoing play, but they don't know it?

Weeks: So then your answer to 3 is, some would be players and some would be unwitting players, isn't it?

I don't agree that players must by definition be playful, but I'll come clean! I'm much, much more interested in the question of what we mean when we use the casual, natural English term "unwitting player," and what the term can teach me about game design, than I am in any definitions by which it's an oxymoron.

Oh and along with this last, me, I'll wade through any volume of fruitless definitional squabbling, if on the other hand it means that I get to see games like Colter Hanna's game Horizon and Caitie's game about the NIGHTMARE SERPENT FROM THE HELL OF UNENDING FEAR. This is how I measure a fruitful conversation!

I find this considerably more irritating than I found the among-friends version, and it would seriously deter me from attending such a con.

The among-friends version you posted earlier seemed innocuous enough. It put the burden of responsibility on the "witting players" (aka the players) to decide which of your friends would not-in-principle-mind, or be amused-after-the-fact, with the fact that they were involved in a thing, or anyway otherwise somehow to decide that this is a thing that works.

In this version, what comes across to me is "strangers will be playing games at you without telling you what they are doing; don't allow yourself to be made uncomfortable." I do see that "never let the possibility... make you do anything that makes you..." is different than "don't be...", but the tortured circumlocution doesn't seem to materially alter the sense that the burden of responsibility is placed here upon the mark.

This isn't primarily an ethical concern as such; I have no essential problem with the fact that the waiter in a restaurant who sets your glass down while you're playing Icehouse, thereby altering the playing field crucially, is, by your definition, an "unwitting player." The fact that you're playing a secret game involving X which X doesn't know about doesn't fundamentally alter, I guess, which actions you take towards X are ethical and which are not.

But it just seems like the announced possibility of secret games introduces a kind of noise into social relations that's going to, in the aggregate, make the atmosphere of the con less fun and more creepy. Is that person who is complimenting you, asking a favor of you, confiding in you, doing so in good faith, or as part of a secret game? The balance of I-Thou to I-It relationships is going to be shifted by making other people tokens and random-number-generators.

Games with "unwitting players", after all, abound. Pick-up artists are the obvious first example that springs to mind. I have the sense that the difference between a pick-up artist on the one hand and a swinger on the other hand has to do with gamification and an "unwitting player". It's one thing to have a human interaction for its own sake; another to decide, together, to keep score. But there's a fundamental power asymmetry when one side is keeping score, and concealing that fact.

(First thought on reading the title - Vincent is recasting VDotR as totally a conFIDENCE game? What?)
1. I don't think the ethics issue can be "resolved", but that's true in non-secret play as well. I think there are special additional dangers in unknowing participants, though, so I guess I'd like to add something directed at the knowing players warning them that, as knowing amongst the unknowing, they need to be extra careful not to be abusive. Play the actual game, don't exploit your se-krit no-ldgz for personal giggles. Maybe the fact that anyone might be knowing in one/some game(s) and unknowing in some other(s) is a help, but I wouldn't count on it as a cure-all.
2. For communicating to the adventurers and the demon-chosen, I think it's OK. I'd be concerned about (the more simplistic takes on) thinking that way as a game designer, and I'd kinda reject it as an accurate analysis. Even in that first case, being an oxymoron actually looks helpful to me, as it makes you really think about how it might be interpreted sensibly. Which I'd hope would help with understanding that witting players are both like and unlike unwitting "players", in complex ways.
3. Are you a player? Hard call. I think your potential to be a player is greater, but still not really high. Current thinking - making decisions informed by an understanding of the game is important to my willingness to label someone a player. "Understanding of the game" and "informed decision" are hardly absolute issues, though, so I'm left with "maybe a player, or maybe not."Vincent (If you think it'd be helpful to answer - I, obviously, think it might): In the actual play of Uroos Maluroos Peter posted about, the target got a note much like this one, but even more pointed. What would you say about him and his player-ness?

Gordon: My guess would be that telling him that there was an assassination plot was worse than not. The game banks on the normal unprompted social curiosity of its target player, but the note messes that up.

An interesting thing has happened when you've changed it to a con game. You've got rid of the word "roleplaying."

I think that's significant, because it means we're now asking different questions. We're asking; Hey, does the idea that someone can be an unwitting player in a game lead us to better game design? Does it raise ethical questions? Do roleplay games need shared imaginary spaces? Is there a meaningful difference between a roleplay game and a con-game (or a parlour game) or is creating that distinction only going to limit game design?

Some of those questions are really interesting to me, others less so. The idea of shared imaginary space is something I'm still quite committed to. Good grief, just think of the impact of an idea like "unwitting players" on the "smelly chamberlain" discussion!

@plausible.fabulist
"Is that person who is complimenting you, asking a favor of you, confiding in you, doing so in good faith, or as part of a secret game?"

Based on things Vincent has said in the past (source loose at the moment, it's somewhere here on anyway), probably the answer is "As part of a secret game, which they may or may not be aware of, and possibly also in good faith.". I'm not sure I would disagree if that were the case... but I don't want to speak for him, so I'm just speculating.